Tag Archives: free speech

More Censorship Demands

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There’s a doctored video on Facebook that purports to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) drunk—or in the aftermath of a mild stroke, or…—, it’s been up for several days, and it’s well-known to have been doctored.

Of course, Progressive-Democrats are in an uproar over it and over Facebook’s refusal to remove the video altogether, even though the company has flagged it and downgraded, based on evidence of the video’s faked nature, its rate of appearance in user news feeds.  I disapprove of the video, also, but only because there are plenty of things over which to criticize Pelosi and her fellows without making stuff up, too, and the fakery reduces the overall credibility of those with legitimate criticisms.  However, I don’t want it taken down; that would be rank censorship.

Which brings me to my point.  The Progressive-Democrats are going too far, and Facebook may finally be getting something right.  Here’s Senator Mark Warner (D, VA), Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, as cited by The Hill:

lawmakers need to put “guardrails in place” to prevent a “crisis of confidence” in what consumers see on social media platforms.

Who cares if consumers don’t automatically believe what they see on social media platforms?  Folks in the center and to the right already are skeptical of what they see in the media, whether social or so-called news, as they should be.  It’s only those to the left of center and beyond who care; it’s only the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party who want whatever they put up to be unquestioningly accepted at face value.

Here’s Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook:

We think it’s important for people to make their own informed choice about what to believe[.]

Yewbetcha.

Charging Assange

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Julian Assange, of Manning and Wikileaks infamy, has been indicted on violations of the Espionage Act in addition to the existing charges pending against him.

Naturally, the NLMSM is in an uproar over this putative attack on a free press.

…reignited debate over whether pursuing Mr. Assange for publishing classified information could lead to other cases against journalists who receive government secrets.

There are a couple of things on the NLMSM’s artificial dudgeon, though.  One is that a free press also has to be a responsible press—which includes respect for the law and acceptance of the consequences where the press engages in civil disobedience.  We’re all big boys and girls, though, the press’ and the Left’s contempt for us notwithstanding.  We’re fully capable of recognizing irresponsibility when we see it and disdaining pseudo-journalism when it’s presented.

The larger thing, though, is the role of law in our nation.  We’re either a nation of laws, or we are not.  We’re all equal under law, or some of us get special treatment—descending us into rule by law instead of rule of law.

The laws regarding receiving stolen goods are quite clear: that’s a crime, and the recipient(s) on conviction go to jail.  Except when it’s a journalist who receives the stolen property.  See, for instance, the news outlet that received and published the stolen Ellsberg papers, along with the hue and cry over holding Julian Assange—who’s not even a journalist, for all that he pretends to be—to the consequences from his having received the documents Manning had stolen and sent to him.

A free press requires journalists be allowed to break the same laws the rest of us must obey?  What’s the value of a press that cannot be trusted, that demonstrates its lawlessness by freely receiving stolen goods and profiting from the receipt by publishing the stolen material?

Here’s an alternative—a bare minimum of movement of the NLMSM back within the reach of the same laws the rest of us must obey.

Upon receipt of the stolen material, the news outlet and the receiving journalist must immediately return the originals of the material to the robbed entity and identify to law enforcement the person(s) and/or entity from which the material was received.  Upon return, the news outlet would be free to publish based on its copies of the stolen material.

Should the journalist or news outlet refuse, the journalist (or the news outlet’s chief editor, if the receiving journalist cannot be clearly identified) should be jailed until the originals are returned and the delivering person/entity identified.

Of course, overriding the above is whether the stolen material is classified (the Manning theft, for instance).  In this instance, the material and the receiving news outlet and its personnel would be subject to laws pertaining to (mis)handling classified material.

More Censorship

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Jack Dorsey has chosen to have his Twitter company censor another conservative account, this time @AOCPress.  Their crime? They mock a Progressive-Democrat (I’ll leave it as an exercise for the student to figure out who).  Dorsey insists the parody account (an obviously parody account—it was labeled “parody”) mislead fellow tweeters.  Because, apparently, Dorsey’s customers are mind-numbingly stupid and can’t recognize parody.

Dorsey seems not to like parody in general, too, at least when it comes from Conservatives.

Twitter has also banned an account parodying former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, and another that mocked Russian president Vladimir Putin.

This is free speech Left-style.

A Politician Demands Doxing Occur

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Doxing is the deliberate exposure of personally identifying information, things like phone numbers and home addresses of individuals—often including family members: wives, husbands, and children—in order for each of those folks to be personally confronted with opprobrium at their homes and schools.

Pennsylvania State Representative Brian Sims, a Progressive-Democrat, called for precisely that when he confronted and harassed a woman and her two teenaged daughters who were praying outside an abortion clinic in Sims’ Philadelphia district. He went far beyond his on-scene harassment, though. He recorded his verbal assault and posted it on line, with this request for doxing:

So, here’s the deal.  I’ve got $100 to anybody who will identify these three, and I will donate to Planned Parenthood.

When he started catching flak for his assault and his call for the dox, Sims posted his follow-on:

I can do better.

He masqueraded that as a sort-of apology.

Here’s one of the results of doxing.  Swatting is a false call to emergency facilities claiming a deadly event—usually a domestic violence claim—in progress and please hurry. This is done while identifying a doxed address as the location of the supposed deadliness.  For example,

a call from a man who said he had shot his wife and then tied up his children inside his house, where he had several pipe bombs.

And this:

A perpetrator was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison for launching a swatting attack in December 2017 in Wichita, KA, against a man who was killed by police responding to the call.

Given the emotional tension and outright violence already extant surrounding the abortion/anti-abortion conflict, it’s ludicrous to the point of insulting our intelligence to consider any premise that Sims didn’t know these risks.

Sims’ subsequent post is, to use the technical term, BS.  He was speaking—shouting, really—from his heart when he engaged in his verbal assault and subsequent call for his targets to be doxed.  His later commentary is nothing more than words mouthed for his personal benefit, politically spoken to dodge his culpability.

Sims needs to go. He can have no value in a State government purporting to represent its constituents.

Censorship Continued

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The Poynter Institute, an organization that masquerades itself as a…watchdog…built a list of what it claimed to be unreliable news outlets and then urged censorship through boycotting these offending outlets. “Unreliable,” mind you, was determined by Poynter personnel.  Then they got caught, and they’re claiming to have withdrawn their list.

Here are two critical clues to the nature of their list. One is [emphasis added]:

…initially released a list of more than 500 “unreliable” news outlets purportedly “built from pre-existing databases compiled by journalists, fact-checkers, and researchers around the country.”

Even those purported researchers were carefully unnamed.

And this one:

The index was created with the help of an employee for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

That’s by itself is a fatal condemnation.

From those two clues, it’s clear that the Poynter Institute got exactly what it was looking for.  It just got caught, like the Ezra Klein’s JournoList of a few short years ago.

Do we have, though, any reason to believe the list actually has been scrapped? Or is it merely being better hidden? Like that JournoList. This is, after all, a long-established member of the NLMSM.  The Managing Editor of Poynter, Barbara Allen, had this about that in her statement:

[W]e are removing this unreliable sites list until we are able to provide our audience a more consistent and rigorous set of criteria. The list was intended to be a starting place for readers and journalists to learn more about the veracity of websites that purported to offer news; it was not intended to be definitive or all encompassing

In other words, they’ll be back with a more effectively disguised version of their attempt at censorship, a censorship goal made plain by her next sentence. A starting place for readers and journalists to learn more about the veracity of websites, indeed. A “starting place” written by journalists and JournoList members who will define for us “veracity,” because we’re too stupid to recognize it on our own.

And not intended to be definitive….  Yewbetcha.